bloodteethandflame

Another emotional weekend.

Another chain of days wherein I am left contemplating the line between being compassionate and being naive.

~~~

And here.  Here is a foolish thing.

This morning while I was out walking my dog, I noticed at least a dozen black vultures perched upon the streetlights lining the parkway that runs along a significant portion of my daily route.  Even though vultures usually don’t roost in my neighborhood very often, I figured that there must have been some fresh roadkill somewhere.  (I didn’t — and I still don’t — want to assume that their presence has any at all to do with the fact that that I’ve also been dreaming of vultures a lot lately.  I comfort myself to think that there has to be some other mundane reason.)

So, as I was walking toward quite a large cluster of them, I realized much to my dismay, that, with the way in which the road was laid out, I was going to have to walk past several streetlights in the row.

And I was going to have to pass beneath quite a number of them where they were perched.

(Yes, I’ll admit that I feared being…hissed at and shat upon.)

As I got closer, I began to walk more briskly, all the while telling myself that I am going to be OK, I’m just passing through…this is not something that I can avoid.  These are just…vultures.  A lot of black vultures.

And looking back on it, you know, I can’t explain why I started to feel anxious, but I did….

and so, next thing I know, I had started running….

And because I was so busy feeling anxious

and not really looking where I was going

I promptly fell hard into a hole that I could not have seen

and I twisted my ankle.

I laid there for a good minute or two, feeling mortified, embarrassed and hurting.

Upon looking up, I see them – three vultures — calmly looking down at me, from their perches atop the streetlight.

They did not move.  They did not hiss.  And they did not shit on me.

They just looked at me.

(They were just like this – except for looking downward. I didn’t take this picture. ^Phil Thach did.)

Evidently, black vultures like to perch on street lights

…and eat ‘horrible things for tea.’

(I guess that ‘ and eat roadkill when necessary’ doesn’t have the same ring to it, though it has the same amount of syllables.)

Not making fun.  Just trying to adapt.

~~~

Mr. L is wondering why I am avoiding again.

Asking why I am struggling to embrace my spirit animal.

Because, sometimes…vultures frighten me.

*sigh*